News in English about Cuba focusing on Human Rights but including general news relevant to the issues.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

This is why American tourists don’t want to travel to Cuba

This is why American tourists don't want to travel to Cuba
By Kari Paul
Published: May 3, 2017 6:39 a.m. ET

Interest is waning a year after the country was opened up to U.S. visitors

A flash of excitement about travel to Cuba after the country opened its
borders to the U.S. in 2016 for the first time in decades may have lost
some of its shine.

Americans are less interested in travel to Cuba this year than they were
in 2016, a survey from insurance provider Allianz Global Assistance
found. Some 76% of the 1,514 respondents said they were not likely to
plan a trip to Cuba in 2017 compared to 70% in 2016. Only 2% of those
surveyed planned to visit Cuba in the next six months or by the end of
2017, the same as 2016 despite a projected increase in travelers from
the country's ministry of tourism. It also found that 60% of Americans
said "would not like to travel to Cuba" compared to just 58% in 2016.

Although some of these shifts may be expected after the initial flurry
of interest, flight trends also suggest demand is lower than initially
expected, said Brian Sumers, an airline analyst at travel site Skift.
"When the country opened up, just about every U.S. airline was obsessed
with getting as many routes into Havana as it possibly could — they
thought it was going to be a gravy train," he said. "Now, as I
understand it, a lot of the flights are empty."

Indeed, the initial excitement about the formerly closed off country
gave way to moral dilemmas over food shortages and other problems caused
by tourism, as well as disappointment over limited working internet,
lower hotel standards, and lack of running water there. The Allianz
study found lack of travel infrastructure was a major cause of anxiety
about traveling to Cuba for 13% of Americans.

The slide in demand has led a number of airlines to reduce or completely
eliminate flights to the country, including Silver Airways, a
Florida-headquartered domestic airline that dropped all nine of its
planned routes to Cuba. Frontier is dropping its Miami-Havana route by
June 4, after costs in Havana "significantly exceeded our initial
assumptions," a spokesman told MarketWatch. Spirit Airlines will drop
its last flight to Cuba by June 1: "The costs of serving Havana continue
to outweigh the demand for service," Spirit Airlines SAVE, -0.23%
president and chief executive officer of Bob Fornaro said in April.

Sumers suggested confusion over the approved reasons to go to Cuba is
keeping the average American visitor away still. As of May 2017,
visitors to the country have to select one of 12 categories for their
visit, which include religious activities, humanitarian projects,
"support for the Cuban people," and journalistic activities. "You can't
go to Cuba to sit on the beach and have fun and that's what Americans
like to do on vacation," he said. "Cuba is a bit of an outlier still —
it is not easy to visit and for a lot of people it's still a pain. You
have to really want to go there."

While flights to Cuba continue to fluctuate, interest in trips to the
country remains high, according to separate data from travel search
website Kayak, indicating that there is initial interest in flying
there, even if that interest doesn't last. It found a 173% increase in
Cuba searches in April 2017 compared to April 2016, and listed Cuba as
the number one trending destination heading into 2017. However, it's
important to note Kayak's data reflects searches, not actual bookings,
said vice president of marketing Dave Solomito. Plus, this jump in
interest is likely to be expected after former President Obama relaxed
travel restrictions in March 2016.

"It's possible that people are searching for Cuba travel to explore
their options, but decide not to go once they learn of the travel
restrictions or conduct their research on lodging options, which are
still limited at this point," he said. Hotels are expensive in Cuba,
since there are so few of them that meet U.S. standards, and while
accommodation is cheap compared to the U.S., many of the Airbnb listings
may fall short of expectations in other countries. (Airbnb, for its
part, has said Cuba is its fastest growing market)

The uncertainty about Cuba travel comes after a record year for tourism
in the country: 4 million tourists visited in 2016, a 13% increase from
2015, and the Cuban ministry of tourism previously projected a further
increase to 4.1 million visitors in 2017. Madeleine Russak,
communications director at Engage Cuba, a coalition of private companies
and local leaders in favor of lifting the trade embargo on Cuba, said
she expects the influx of tourists to continue to increase, citing
cruise lines increasing routes to Cuba and several airlines expanding
their service there.

Cuba has a long way to go before it's suitable for many high-maintenance
American tourists. "This will come with certain expectations: Americans
expect that cell phones will work, credit cards will work, and that
access to internet won't be limited," she said. "These expectations,
along with the monetary support American travelers provide for Cuban
entrepreneurs in the tourism sector, will help foster the kind of change
that will not only further increase American interest in traveling to
our island neighbor, but also benefit the Cuban people."